Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The United States Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS) has now released some interesting data giving us a sense of which
Americans have selected a Health Insurance Marketplace plan by both age
and gender and which plan they have selected by level during the first three
months of activity. Here we go.

This graphic shows how enrolment in
the Federally-facilitated Marketplace (FFM) ramped up over the three month
period:

A total of 1.2 million Americans
have selected a plan through the federal Health Insurance Marketplace since
October 1, 2013. An additional 956,000 plans were selected in the
State-Based Marketplace (SBM) for a grand total of 2,153,421. You will
observe that, over the first 9 weeks, less than 200,000 individuals enrolled in
a plan through the FFM, an average of just over 22,200 a week, a number that is directly
related to the website technical issues. Since that time, roughly 1.05
million enrolments have taken place over a four week period to the end of
December. Interestingly, there were 53.223 million visits to the state
and federal websites and 11.266 million calls to the state and federal Call
Centres over the same period. In total, 4.348 million applications were
completed through the federal and state Marketplaces.

Here is a gender breakdown of the
enrollees:

It's interesting to note that males
account for 50 percent of the population between the ages of 0 and 64, meaning
that males are relatively under-represented in those that have enrolled in the
Marketplace thus far.

Here is a graph showing the type of
plan selected:

The vast majority of enrollees have
selected a Silver Markeplace Plan which is anticipated to cover 70 percent of a person's health care costs. In addition, 79 percent of all
enrollees will be receiving Federal financial assistance in paying their
premiums. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates that the average
exchange subsidy per subsidized enrollee in 2013 will be $5290, rising to $7900 in 2023.

Lastly, here is a graph showing the
age breakdown of enrolees:

Young adults between the ages of 18
and 34 account for 24 percent of all Marketplace plan selections, below the 26
percent level that they represent in the overall population. HHS
anticipates that "older and sicker" individuals will tend to enroll
earlier while younger and healthier people will have a tendency to wait until
the end of the open enrollment period which ends on March 31, 2014.

The number of young people enrolling
is critical. The White House had hoped that 39 percent of enrollees would
be within the 18 to 34 age group to prevent insurers from having to cover a
significantly higher proportion of high-risk (read "older and
sicker") beneficiaries. This situation could cause a "death
spiral" where insurers are forced to raise premiums to cover the
additional cost of "older and sicker" individuals, a situation that
could make it more difficult for younger and healthier individuals to afford
health insurance over the long-term.

According to the Congressional
Budget Office (CBO), without the ACA, 57 million non-elderly Americans
currently have no form of health care insurance. From this HHS data
release, we can see that the Affordable Care Act has a long way to go before it
puts a significant dent in the number of Americans who do not have access to
health care insurance.

2 comments:

Single Payer would have been a much better option, get rid of the money sucking insurance companies. All the ACA did is force people into buying a product from a private company. What the hell is wrong with American land of the free, to be either taxed or forced to buy insurance from a private company for your healthcare needs.....

I question whether we will be able to make it across this bridge or it will collapse under our feet. My rates have gone up a lot while my health history is very good. If I had little in the way of assets I would drop coverage. If rising rates cause enough healthy people to drop coverage rates get pushed even higher. More on this subject below.

Subscribe To

About Me

I have been an avid follower of the world's political and economic scene since the great gold rush of 1979 - 1980 when it seemed that the world's economic system was on the verge of collapse. I am most concerned about the mounting level of government debt and the lack of political will to solve the problem. Actions need to be taken sooner rather than later when demographic issues will make solutions far more difficult. As a geoscientist, I am also concerned about the world's energy future; as we reach peak cheap oil, we need to find viable long-term solutions to what will ultimately become a supply-demand imbalance.